1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to data processing and, in particular, to text processing. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method, apparatus, and program for transliteration of text in various Indian languages.
2. Description of Related Art
Many people in India are multilingual. About 400 million people speak Hindi and English or Urdu. Over 200 million people speak Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, English, or another regional language. Many have only a spoken/hearing understanding of even more languages. India has eighteen official languages—the total number of languages spoken is unknown—and the languages have numerous dialects. For example, Tamil alone has over 128 dialects. Languages vary from state to state and the scripts used by the languages are completely different.
The ability to speak and understand a locally used language is important for living and/or working in India. In addition, Indian languages are spoken by groups of people all over the world. People long to be able to communicate with others in their native language, some of whom may be half way around the world for business or personal reasons.
A problem arises when a person has a knowledge of some Indian languages, but does not know the script that is used to represent this language. A person may understand a spoken Indian language, but may not be able to read documents written in the language. Additionally, a person may be looking for a name in a telephone directory, which is published in a different script. The user might know how a name is said, but might not know how it is represented in the other script.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a mechanism for presenting a transliteration of a selected word, phrase, or document in a target language or script.